THE PRAGMATIST; Almost Time To Change the Bulb

By BOB TEDESCHI

Published: August 11, 2011

CORRECTION APPENDED

YOU may have heard that the federal government wants to limit your choice of light bulbs, starting in January.

If only.

Thanks to regulations taking effect that month under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, shopping for light bulbs is fast becoming akin to choosing a spouse: the options are almost endless, and the object of your affection might last longer in the house than you.

The misconception about limited choice is, specifically, that the new rules outlaw incandescent lights. But they don't. They just place efficiency standards on incandescents. Starting in January, any bulb that can generate the amount of light produced by a conventional 100-watt bulb, but do so with roughly 30 percent less energy, will be eligible for the market. The new law is gradual -- in 2013, the rule will be extended to 75-watt bulbs, followed, in 2014, by 60- and 40-watt bulbs -- but the point is that nothing is outlawed if it meets the new mandated efficiencies.

What's more, the looming rules have triggered rapid advances in a number of lighting technologies. Halogens, a type of incandescent that delivers light the way Edison intended, with a tungsten filament, are now available in the standard bulb shape. Compact fluorescent lights, or C.F.L.'s, have gotten better at delivering good light quickly, and without the buzzing and flickering for which they were known. And some bulbs with light-emitting diodes, or L.E.D.'s, now cast their light in all directions, not just one.

To help consumers, retailers like the Home Depot and Lowe's are working to simplify shopping, with better merchandising and displays with samples of the forthcoming bulbs. Also, some manufacturers, like Sylvania, Philips and General Electric, are already putting ''lighting facts'' labels on at least a few bulbs, even though new labeling requirements do not take effect until January.

But the changes are still complicated. For instance, instead of categorizing bulbs in terms of watts, a measure of power, shoppers will speak of lumens, a measure of the light that bulbs cast. To ease this change, bulbs will be described in yet a third way, ''watt equivalents.'' A 60-watt equivalent bulb, for example, will emit as much light as the old 60-watt incandescent. And although the new law does not apply to fluorescent tube lights, three-way bulbs and other specialty lights, manufacturers are extending law-inspired changes to these exempt products, too.

Bottom line: If you go shopping without a good idea of what you want, you'll leave the store with a headache and a fervent desire to never think about bulbs again.

I barely escaped that fate recently, during a massive bulb tryout for the roughly 40 sockets in my house. I gathered bulbs from three leading manufacturers -- Philips, General Electric and Sylvania -- as well as from niche lighting companies like Cree, TCP and others, to assess the latest technologies.

I sought shopping advice from three experts: Konstantinos Papamichael, a director of the California Lighting Technology Center at the University of California, Davis; Russell Leslie, a founder of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y.; and Craig A. Bernecker, the director of the Lighting Education Institute, in Philadelphia.

Their advice: In the short term, you can continue to light your home with incandescents. But in the long run, they say, if you study the various lighting technologies, you can save money and time -- and, perhaps, see every part of your home in its best light.

For most people, who are accustomed to a simpler light-bulb market, that's asking a lot.

Now, bulb buyers think primarily about the amount of light they need from a bulb, he explained, with the quality of the light and its suitability for the colors in a room as secondary considerations, if that. Still fewer people consider the different ways that bulbs distribute light. If you choose to wade into the waters of energy-efficient bulbs, however, these factors quickly come into play.

Don't be daunted, Mr. Papamichael said. ''Experiment with different light versions, and do it slowly.''

I followed his advice carefully. Except for the ''slowly'' part. Which I now regret. I gave myself 10 days, and a two-part mission. First, test the roughly 30 bulbs I had assembled in a few sockets in my house, and study their effects. Second, proceed to various rooms and see what looks good where -- because what works in the kitchen might not work in the living room.

First up, halogens.

Because these bulbs are a type of incandescent, they share traditional incandescents' qualities. They throw light in all directions (''omnidirectional'' in the new light-bulb vocabulary), which makes them good for filling a lampshade or a chandelier. Also, their filament's firelike glow produces light waves on the warmer end of the color spectrum -- orange, red, yellow. Such light is a good match for similarly warm-colored rooms, but a weak one for rooms done in blues or grays.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: A chart last Thursday with the Pragmatist column, about light bulbs, misstated the average cost of an L.E.D. bulb that delivers light equivalent to that of a 60-watt incandescent. It is $2.92 per 1,000 hours based on the national average utility rate of 11 cents a kilowatt-hour and an average purchase price of $40. It is not $1.32. (That is the cost just for the electricity.)

The column also misstated the components that produce light in an L.E.D. They are a mix of aluminum, indium and other materials, based on a compound semiconductor called gallium nitride rather than on silicon chips.